


The Idea of a Family

by ivyspinners



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Communication, F/M, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Normal Life, Post-War, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 20:32:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11585661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyspinners/pseuds/ivyspinners
Summary: "Do you want children?" she asks. She’s not going to allow this pregnancy, no matter what he says, but she wants to know what he wants.A woman of twenty-nine is very different from a girl of sixteen. Jyn and four decisions, at four separate times of her life.





	The Idea of a Family

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired in no small part by FernWithy's amazing _[The Four Decisions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/655407)_ , which I whole-heartedly recommend to anyone even the slightest interested by the premise of this story.

Jyn gets the implant when she’s seventeen and has a... call it a scare. She’s always known what it is to go hungry but food is so thin, her first year away from the Saw, that fine hairs spring along her lower back and her cycles stop altogether.

There’s a humanitarian clinic the next town over, with a beat-up, scratched up medical droid and--as is usual for the Outer Rim--scarcity of supplies, but some tests are well within its capabilities.

"You are malnourished," the droid informs her with obvious disapproval, "not pregnant."

"Good. Thanks." She checks her blaster’s tucked in well against her thigh and rises to leave.

"Would you be interested in long-term contraception? An implantable device--"

"No." Jyn’s hardly going to let a droid near enough to hurt her, to get a sample of her blood.

"I assure you, they’re perfectly safe."

 _You’re not_ , she doesn’t say.

She does get an implant a few months later, from someone an acquaintance trusts. It costs as much as a week of food, maybe more if she stretched it out and mixed it with stormwater and weeds, but better to control what can sap her strength than let it catch her unawares.

"Five years, then its reliability gets... sketchy," the medic says. She looks uncomfortable, but Jyn had known what she was in for. There is always a reason when someone prices their wares cheap.

Jyn doesn’t bother saying _she_ might not last long enough for it to matter.

+

The second scare comes nearly a year after joining the Rebellion, fresh from a mission to Kyriak. It had been a miserable three weeks of humidity, heat, and tiny insects, and half the unit returns to base with signs of Kyriakal fever. It’s the routine checkup that reveals the truth.

She’s alone when 2-1B gives her the news -- her roommate is puking his guts out in the fresher -- and doesn’t need time to consider. The thought of running through the field with a bloated stomach and bloated fingers roils her stomach. A war is no place for a child whose parents would leave her behind.

"I want it dealt with."

There is a brief pause.

"Could you please clarify?" the droid asks.

Jyn should have remembered that these droids, in particular, require precise orders. "I don’t want to be pregnant. I want it gone."

She finds Cassian before she takes the pills the droid gave her, purely because he’s already on base. They hadn’t discussed this beforehand, except for reassurances that they’d both taken precautions. Jyn’s, she realizes when she counts backwards, is on the edge of its expiry date.

Cassian, it turns out, also lost track of time after everything that happened after Scarif.

"The droids kept track of our routine shots," he says. "The droids on Yavin."

They had been lost in the year since Scarif, destroyed when the evacuating ships carrying them were shot down by the _Executor._

"I haven’t needed to get so close to a target since then," he says, an apology in his voice. Jyn’s skin crawls at the thought. If that’s the reason he lost track, she can forgive him.

"Do you want children?" she asks. She’s not going to allow this pregnancy, no matter what he says, but he’s... she wants to know what he wants.

He links their fingers together, and looks like he wants to say something, but changes his mind at the last moment. When he finally opens his mouth, his voice gives away nothing. "Do you want to keep it?"

She shakes her head. "No. Not today."

Her answer leeches the tension from Cassian's shoulders, relief weighing down his sigh. "I couldn’t be a father. I would not know how. The idea of a family..." He shakes his head.

"And I’d be a horrible mother," she adds. Having a child wouldn’t change that.

She takes the pills. They both get fresh implants.

+

She keeps closer track afterwards, which is easier, when there’s a reason for her to keep a record of the date. Before, one day hadn’t mattered more than any other. But now there are missions, planned transmissions with Chirrut and Baze, the days Bodhi returns from flying his missions, the Life Days of children born on base (most, but not all, sent to relative safety afterwards). There is the war.

There is the war’s end, which is more than she thought she’d survive to see, but something she’s imagined with increasing longing.

If the Death Star’s destruction left her empty, drained of angry strain, the peace accord signings after Jakku are little different. They leave her adrift.

"I feel like I’m seventeen again," she admits to Cassian, tucked in his arms, her nerves soothed by the steady thump of his heart. It’s been a long day, and she is not entirely recovered yet from the Battle of Jakku.

"Starving?" he says; he sounds as tired as she did.

"Like I’m seventeen and lost, but thirty times better off," she amends.

He’s quiet for a minute. "When I was seventeen, I was deep undercover at the Imperial Academy on Coruscant. I didn’t think I would live to see this."

Jyn tugs at one of his arms until she can press a kiss to the palm of his hand, because she’ll never stop being grateful that he did. That she did. She feels his lips brush against her hair in response. Even if her guiding purpose has lost its edge, she still has this.

They fall asleep like that, warm and comfortable.

(She wakes like that, thrashing against arms that suddenly feel like tight shackles, sweat pouring down her forehead, and the taste of Jedha’s dust in her mouth. She knew better than to hope that the nightmares would be start to fade, but she’s still a little disappointed).

Eventually, they both settle into roles as unofficial advisors for the New Republic--advisors who travel through seedy dens of the galaxy, linking together smuggler networks and trading posts for Mon Mothma’s advantage. The difference between now and then is the _time_ on their hands; time to visit Shara and Kes and watch Poe Dameron grow as fast as their mystical tree, time to watch Jedha’s population slowly creep back under Bodhi’s and Chirrut’s and Baze’s guidance, time to rest. Time to pick up orphans to send Chirrut and Baze’s way, even the ones that want to stay. (An interesting family, Cassian once comments, eyes warm.)

They’re on Corellia when the date hits Jyn like a splash of cold water.

"What do you want?" Cassian asks, as though he _still_ weren’t allowed a say in it, as if he weren’t her family.

She’s still grateful, all the same. "I don’t know."

She still has nightmares of the war, but more and more, she knows where she is on waking.

The corner of his mouth turns up. In another room, the most recent orphan--a Mandalorian five-year-old and his three-year-old sister--shouts at the HoloChannel in delight.

"I don’t know either." He glances at her, with far less tension in his shoulders than the last time they spoke of this. "Wait until we do?"

It sounds like a reasonable plan.

She has her implant renewed the next day, while Cassian watches the two Mandalorians, and he gets his after that.

+

They visit a grey, rocky, planet where Cassian spent his brief childhood, and they visit the black-shale, mountainous planet Jyn spent hers. There are too many memories to settle on either, but she wants Cassian to feel the dirt beneath his toes, the sea against his ankles. The First Order rises, in some deep corner of the galaxy, but she thinks that they’re allowed this.

She shivers in the cold of Lah’mu’s ocean, and scowls her annoyance when Cassian laughs--she uses it to hide her wonder, watching him without a weight on his shoulders.

"This," he says, "is not cold."

"Well this is _deep_ ," she says, and drags him underwater until he breaks free, sputtering.

He returns the favour with a salt-edged kiss that leaves her head spinning. They barely make it to shore before she’s pushing him onto his back, sucking at his sensitive throat.

It’s three years since she renewed her implant on Corellia, and she’s never felt so light, never felt so sure about them and him and that they’re going to be alright.

Afterwards, he traces the scars on her arms, and lingers where the implant stays in her arm. It’s only a moment, and he likes to do this after sex -- warm, gentle caresses with awe in eyes -- but she catches his fingers and keeps them there.

He looks at her with a question in his gaze.

"What if I said that I’m not going to renew it again?" she asks, splaying her palm across his chest.

He brushes his thumb across her skin, the picture of calm.

"I'd say it would be nice," he murmurs, "to add another member to this family."

+

fin


End file.
